An individual's desire to consume content is not a differentiator/strategic advantage for any one company. Why is it really hard to build a successful new social network, search engine or smartphone platform? Because Facebook has the network effect, Google search is a superior product as it's improved each day by its 100 of millions of users and Apple has a vertically integrated ecosystem that locks users into using an iPhone.
Google's search is barely rivaled by anyone because it returns the best results, which are content.
The network effect is important. One of the major reasons it's important is because it can deliver more and better content.
Understanding tech companies different business models and how paid-for content fits into that does.
Even content from one's garage that users put up on eBay or the paint splatters up for auction at Sothebys New York?
These processes require precision, careful cost analysis, and ultimately employ 10s of thousands of people, all in the process of providing basic living essentials like food, transport, energy, medicine, etc.
What do Disney (#52 Fortune 500) or Time Warner (#95 Fortune 500) do that warrants their presence alongside the Pfizers (provides medication; #54) and 3Ms (provides all kinds of materials and plastics; #94) of the world? They throw mud at the wall until it sticks and then just rehash, rehash, rehash. It is far more profitable than any natural business, meaning a business that exist due to real market forces instead of artificially-imposed monopolies (without copyright, there is virtually unlimited supply to "content", making the market infertile at best).
We have given away the farm to content owners. Copyright must be substantially weakened. Content is only so grotesquely profitable because we threaten to imprison those persons who copy things without the consent of their local MegaCorp; that is, such transactions occur within a completely artificial marketplace. We need to fix this.
The best way to reply is to link to the M.I.T. PDF on most profitable business models - search the word creator: http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp226.pdf
"...Figure 4 shows the distribution of different business models in our sample of large US firms. By far the most common basic business model in our sample is Creator, with 46% of total revenues of the firms in our sample falling within this category.
Landlord type models account for 34% of total revenues, followed by Distributors with 18% of total revenues, and Brokers with 2%. In addition, an overwhelming portion (70%) of the business of large-revenue, publicly traded firms still involves physical assets. Financial and Human assets account for 12% and 13%, respectively, and Intangible assets are only 4% of the revenues of large firms. Figure 4 also shows the numbers of firms generating revenues with each model and asset type. ..."
Creating food is content as well.
These movies came out in the 1930s. They are almost 100-years old.
NetFlix got that fact pretty quickly when the studios wanted to renegotiate contracts and that is where the bulk of their money is coming from. [They are] the creator and the distributor.
edit to fix typo.
As product owners/creators, we can easily obsess about our platform and loose sight of the needs of the users we set out to serve, then scratch our heads when users jump ships to a crappier service (in our biased judgement) which happens to have more content.